@woozle @iona yeah, you can exchange BTC directly with other currencies as well, p2p via https://localbitcoins.net for example, or via some exchange platforms (who have separate BTC valuations for each currency they support)

@mayel @woozle I'm interested in the whole thing because GBP is quite unstable at present thanks to our various political issues. It fluctuates quite wildly depending on what is being said by politicians that day.

The idea of a currency that is invulnerable to such bullshit appeals to me quite a lot right now. BTC probably isn't that currency, it seems to move more wildly than the pound, but the idea still feels right.

@iona @woozle yeah I understand, BTC is definitely not it, if only for the unsustainable energy use... I would look at http://faircoin.world

. @mayel @woozle If we are going to be a global economy, it seems like perhaps getting rid of the various little local currencies that are vulnerable to political nonsense would be a way forward.

Everything in this country has shot up in price since the silly referendum, especially imported tech products. I paid more pounds for a 120GB SSD in 2017 than I did in 2014, and these things usually come *down*.

@iona @woozle Yes, BTC has its issues. And I don't really see it as "THE currency". It is the first one, but definitely not the best. It is inefficient (I once had to wait out a week or so for a pretty expensive transaction because of network overload - and I to just toss some dough between MY wallets, WTF!), it is carbon-wasteful (although I see it as more of society issue, in other words, stop burning coal and oil for energy you fuckers) and storage size is a timebomb. But it IS a step forward.

@drequivalent @iona

/me checks the current price of BTC (a donation of ~$10 I received about a year ago is now worth ~$500, wtf) and notes that the price-history since 2010 kind of resembles a graph of the global average temperature-anomaly over the past few centuries... <.<

@woozle @iona Well, duh. It's an exponent. All exponents look similar.

@woozle @iona Also, congrats on $500 donation maybe?

@drequivalent @iona

Effectively, yeah... though the question remains of whether to let it sit there gaining more value indefinitely, or if there will be a huge collapse at some point (and just how far back that will set things if it happens).

For now, I figure it might be useful to have some actual BTC on hand rather than cashing it all out, so leaving it there.

@woozle @drequivalent I don't even know where you can keep BTC.

@iona @drequivalent Well, I keep mine on my desktop hard drive.

I need to set up better backups... but it's, like, 170+ GB, so this is nontrivial. (That's another issue with BTC, for those following along: effing huge storage requirements that keep getting huger.)

@woozle @iona Yeah, that's what I said about storage footprint being a timebomb - there's a "light" mode that only keeps the latest transactions, but it still means that someone has to shoulder the weight of full chain, and it's already kind of centralization, which blows the whole idea of BTC as fully distributed universally-accessible Internet money into fucking smithereens.

@drequivalent @woozle Because in effect, if you are storing your BTC on someone else's computer or platform, you might as well just store EUR or USD in a bank.

@iona @woozle You mean "light mode"?

@iona @woozle There's a lot of options, actually. You can download a 'cold wallet', the original one. That means you will keep your wallet file safe with you, in your own house, but it also means you'll have to keep everyone's transactions forever, which is ~120GB at this point, and is getting bigger. Or you can register account on something like blockchain.com, a "hot wallet" that does all keeping for you. It's kinda less safe (and also a bit less 'true' to the idea), but also means less hassle.

@drequivalent @iona My wallet is 178.4 GB.